Temperatures and Chemical Abundances of Accreting White Dwarfs in Cataclysmic Binaries

We present new results on surface temperatures, and chemical abundances of accreting white dwarfs (WD) in cataclysmic and symbiotic binaries. The S-Type symbiotic system RW Hydrae contains an accreting WD with a surface temperature of 160,000 K and little evidence for the presence of an accretion disk. The presence of accreted heavy elements in CV WD atmospheres suggests either dredgeup of metals in the white dwarf from the effects of ongoing dwarf nova episodes or contamination of the Roche lobe-filling donors by repeated past nova explosions. We report on the first detection of the nuclide Argon in the photosphere of an accreting white dwarf by Godon et al. (2017).